Chapter 782: Winter Is the Season of Purification

Locke directed the tree-man, following the flow of planar force to seek out those upon whom the remaining fortune of this world was converging. Locke was not a precognition wizard and was not skilled in this area.

But he possessed the enhanced Second Circle wizard insight that came with the Three-Eyed Tiger Cat, as well as the Spiritual Sight built upon the foundation of his Grand Magic and thus strengthened by it.

And so he swiftly locked onto over a hundred targets upon whom the Louis World's planar force was converging.

These people were scattered throughout the various tribes across the Louis World's ice plain.

Locke had only just arrived at one tribe on the ice plain when he discovered that it had already been struck by an undead catastrophe. Endless skeleton warriors appeared from the distance.

An undead vulture that fed on death appeared in the sky above the tribe.

That was the Death-Feeding Vulture.

Possessing a degree of precognitive ability, it was clear that the Louis World harbored a considerable number of these undead birds, used to detect those who might arise to resist Wizard Berbel Morgan.

Very quickly, the entire tribe in this part of the world was slaughtered.

Within the undead army, the lich-king's mount appeared. The lich-king's eye sockets flickered with soul flames, for he was clearly Wizard Berbel Morgan's avatar in this world.

Wizard Berbel Morgan had placed his avatar into this world to suppress it, strengthen his control over it, become the lord of the Louis Plane, and command the entire undead catastrophe within the plane.

The lich-king's mount was the frost bone dragon. He stood atop the frost bone dragon's skull, his flickering soul flames looking down upon the tree-man that Locke's consciousness had occupied.

"Locke Augustine, what are you scheming?"

"Do you wish to make use of this world's chosen ones? That is laughable. I have fully mastered this plane."

"Even so, every time you approach a tribe where a chosen one resides, my army will immediately draw near and slaughter that tribe."

"I will not give you any opportunity."

Wizard Berbel Morgan was clearly staking everything on this.

"This world war, you will not necessarily win. You have no world backing you."

The frost bone dragon beneath his feet was infused with planar force. It opened its dragon maw, and dragon breath erupted from within.

The entire plane seemed to be blanketed beneath the sound of the dragon's roar.

In the next instant, the frost bone dragon breathed out icy dragon breath. That cold was like the silence of the apocalypse, the end of all things, everything frozen into ice.

The tree-man that Locke's consciousness occupied was frozen solid in an instant by the dragon breath.

In the next instant the frost bone dragon swept past the frozen block, then rose into the air, leading the army back to assault the ever-spreading forest and to rejoin the battle between dragons and tree-men.

Three bone dragons continued their battle with the life tree-man.

It was a pity that Locke was not skilled in the way of tree-men, for if Wizard Edgar had been here, directly controlling the life tree-man, he likely could have personally crushed all four bone dragons outright.

Rather than as things stood now, where they were merely at a stalemate.

The frozen tree-man, after the undead forces departed, shattered, and three seeds flew out from within it, flying rapidly away into the distance.

'Berbel is being far too careless.'

'Although he stumbled into disrupting my plan, he failed to notice my true target.'

'Moreover, I used the Lunar Cultivation Method to evolve a native Second Circle magical plant from this world, and used Flowers Bloom and Fall to turn it into seeds.'

At this moment Locke had nineteen thousand magic pressure thanks to the Beast Panel.

And so his standard Grand Magic Runes stood at four, meaning he had one extra Grand Magic Rune available to incorporate into a spell model, and the spell model he chose to incorporate it into was Flowers Bloom and Fall.

Locke asked old Blue-Head Wizard Akman at Golden Crown Mountain for five more articles related to chosen ones, and through reading those five articles rapidly familiarized himself with the relevant content on the subject.

'Artificially creating a chosen one is what precognition magic excels at most.'

'In the Mage Plane years ago, Witch Medea used precognition magic to artificially create a child of destiny.'

'I am not a precognition wizard, but at this moment I have entered the state of Following the Heart Without Transgressing the Bounds, combined with the Second Circle wizard's special abilities. While it would be difficult for me to personally create a true chosen one, choosing a chosen one might well be within reach.'

'Precognition magic is merely a discipline that studies fate. Fate existed before precognition magic. There is no need to paint myself into a corner.'

'Berbel has sealed off the naturally existing chosen ones. The moment I approach any of them, regardless of reason, he will certainly slaughter every living being in that area. In this world, he has a localized magic pressure advantage.'

The three seeds flew along with Locke's consciousness toward a distant location.

Without Wizard Berbel noticing, they came to rest in the hands of a new tree-man, which swept its gaze across two directions ahead.

One direction held an elf tribe fifteen kilometers away, where a chosen one resided.

But Locke knew that the moment he ordered the tree-man to approach, that tribe would be slaughtered immediately.

Wizard Berbel was now like a startled bird. The slightest movement would prompt him to slaughter the entire elf or human tribe.

He would give Locke no opening whatsoever.

The second direction held a human tribe six kilometers away.

At this moment, an undead catastrophe contingent led by death winter knights was marching past that tribe.

The lead death winter knight, whose rank corresponded to a first-class wizard apprentice level, gave a bored command for his forces to hunt and kill half the living beings in the tribe across the ice plain.

It was a game the undead of this world frequently enjoyed playing.

When a tribe's population had recovered to a certain level, they would suddenly descend and order their undead forces to hunt and kill half that tribe's population.

A great massacre would then unfold.

In the world of the dead, there was no need for the living. The living only needed to exist as prey for the undead.

The death winter knight was clad head to toe in blue-black armor, as though he were winter itself made into death. On his chest was a silver mirror.

At this moment, he was about to hunt this tribe.

He deliberately allowed a small number of low-level undead to appear first, letting the humans of this tribe know they were coming, then causing these humans to abandon their tribal home and scatter in flight, before releasing his death winter hounds to run them down.

The death winter knight watched with smug satisfaction as these living beings scrambled to flee for their lives, some even deliberately tripping others so that the onrushing undead would set their sights on a companion rather than themselves.

He had once been an elf in his past life. But after becoming a death knight, he had lost the desire for food and drink, lost the capacity for enjoyment, lost awareness of the passage of time.

His consciousness had even become muddled and blank for a very long period, but one day a dragon's roar suddenly exploded through his mind.

Like the coldest breath of winter in a winter's day.

He had awakened and become a death winter knight. After becoming a death winter knight, every moment of every day he felt an insatiable dissatisfaction, a deep discomfort, but he could no longer satisfy himself through physical pleasures as he had in his elven life.

As an undead, even the most delicious things placed before him were simply wasted. Even the most beautiful scenery left him unmoved.

Yet the more this was the case, the more his spirit was unable to suppress an uncontrollable restlessness. That restlessness transformed into contempt for the living.

Only through hunting the living, and watching those living beings display such greed and cowardice, could he find brief moments of satisfaction for that uncontrollable restlessness within him.

But that satisfaction vanished in an instant.

As an undead, every moment of every day he existed within that insatiable restless unease.

That restlessness was like a winter enduring ten thousand years that could not be thawed.

The death winter knight watched his death winter hounds close their jaws upon the living creatures.

His death winter cavalry, roughly equivalent to third-class wizard apprentice level, scattered and gave chase to the panicking fleeing tribe members.

At this moment, he also found himself a target: two human children fleeing together.

Or rather, a human youth dragging along a human boy of approximately ten years.

The death winter knight watched them, and something seemed to stir in his memory of when he had been an elf, recalling a time when he had gripped his younger sister's hand and fled for their lives.

Memories from his past life leaped continuously through his mind.

But at this moment those memories were not a beautiful blessing, but a source of pain.

He raised the weapon in his hand and struck the ground, and in an instant a crack split the ice plain, the ground trembling and shaking, causing both human youths to stumble and fall. From that crack a blast of freezing air erupted.

The death winter knight seemed to be deliberately toying with them. He did not use that first-class wizard apprentice-level spell to kill them outright, nor did he take the opportunity to cut them down. Instead he commanded his ice bone horses to circle around them.

He spoke in an icy voice.

"Kill one, and the other goes free."

Both human youths immediately understood what he meant.

Only one of them could survive today.

One could escape. One would have to die beneath the terrible death winter blade.

And once they died at the hands of this world's undead catastrophe, they would receive no rest in death. They would be revived once more as undead.

Born as prey, and enslaved in death.

The two youths glanced at each other. Under ordinary logic, these two would need to decide who lived and who died, perhaps a rational decision, perhaps one that would trigger an ugly struggle.

The death winter knight watched the scene with morbid curiosity, waiting for the drama to unfold.

Only in this way could his forever-unsatisfied heart find brief moments of satisfaction.

Only in this way could the eternal suffering that could not be ended find brief respite.

But in that instant, the human youth of approximately sixteen, for reasons unknown, noticed a sword lying on the ground, glinting with cold light. He suddenly picked it up, chose neither flight nor surrender, and raised the sword to cut at the death winter knight.

A flash of astonishment crossed the death winter knight's heart, followed immediately by contemptuous laughter.

The gap between them was simply too vast.

An ordinary person, and a first-class wizard apprentice.

Like the difference between heaven and earth.

The death winter knight said in an icy tone, "You have chosen the path where both of you die."

The human youth's expression held neither resolve nor clarity. It was simply full of fury.

He could not make the rational choice between saving himself or his younger brother.

He was even less able to bring himself to violate his own deepest will, to compel his brother to die here while he himself fled.

He was not that kind-hearted, not that clever, and not that cruel.

In this moment, what little reason he had left had been overwhelmed by the fury of wanting to survive. He had never been intelligent. Learning hunting in the tribe had always come slowly to him, and he was never good at it.

His parents had once said of him that he was not suited to become a hunter with refined skills, that all he could do was odd jobs for the tribe.

Such an ordinary person as he was, at this moment of crisis when survival hung in the balance, his mind simply went blank. And so when he saw a sword lying on the ground, without any desire to think further, completely ignoring the disparity in power between them, he picked it up and swung it at the death winter knight.

But in the very next instant, three seeds came flying from the distance and embedded themselves in that ordinary sword like bullets.

The three seeds rapidly took root and sprouted, as though nourished by some force. The roots of the plum tree wound around the sword, and then winter magical power descended.

The human youth's sword clashed against the death winter knight's blade.

But it was not the former's sword that shattered. It was the latter's that was cut in two.

The death winter knight looked in astonishment at the broken blade in his hand. Then the human youth delivered another strike, cleaving him in two.

The death winter knight looked at the human youth and said, "Why?"

"I feel at ease?"

The appearance of the winter magical power had in an instant broken the Burial Ground's binding of death to winter, causing the world to partially awaken. And once death and winter were unbound, the death winter knight, built upon that binding, naturally lost his power.

But this death winter knight showed no fear of death.

He sensed that his right to die, which had been taken from him, was returning. The long-absent sense of satisfaction appeared once more. The emptiness born from his state of being neither alive nor dead was gradually filled as death returned to him.

The death winter knight looked at the youth and said, "Thank you for allowing me to rest."

A long-absent feeling returned to his spirit.

That feeling was named the fear of death.

Death is the beginning of new life. In every living creature's moment of awakening, the fear of death is precisely the attachment to and pursuit of life.

The moment the death winter knight rediscovered that he could die, fear returned to his heart, and thus he returned to the cycle of life.

Death and new life form a cycle. It is natural for people to resist death, but the Burial Ground had kept people forever trapped in death, believing themselves to be immortal.

This had created the pitiful situation in which every undead under the Burial Ground system perpetually pursued satisfaction that could never be reached.

That feeling had tormented the death winter knight for hundreds of years. He had believed it to be an eternal punishment.

Very well then, since the heavens had given him an eternal punishment, was there any need for him to adhere to any code of conduct?

The death winter knight's soul departed his sinful body.

"Winter is the season that purifies sin."

"Drive that sword into the innermost eternal spirit ground of the Burial Ground."

"This world will receive rest once more."

The elf knight looked at his own hands.

"My sins are grave, and my heart is full of fear."

"I am weak and wretched, in a pitiful state."

"But I can at last be satisfied."